This invention relates to digital recording and reproducing apparatus or digital recording apparatus such as a digital audio tape recorder capable of converting an analog signal into a digital signal and recording the digital signal or directly recording a digital signal without conversion.
Recently, the development of digital audio apparatus has been advanced, and digital recording and reproducing apparatus or digital recording apparatus such as digital audio tape recorders (hereinafter, referred to as DATs) have been put to practical use which is capable of converting signals from conventional analog apparatus into digital signals and recording the digital signals or transferring and recording signals from a digital apparatus in accordance with a digital interface format.
In the conventional DAT, the user can record any one of an analog input signal and a digital input signal by use of an operation switch. However, when the user tries to record a digital signal according to a digital audio interface format, copying is sometimes impossible because of a category code and copy inhibition bit included in the digital audio interface signal (see Japanese Patent Application No. 54269/1988 filed on Mar. 8, 1988).
To solve this problem, a DAT has been proposed in which when a copy inhibition signal is inputted upon starting the digital recording or during digital recording, an input signal to the analog input terminal is converted into a digital signal and recorded (see JP-A-13260/89).
In this proposed DAT, however, a signal from the same source as the digital signal must be supplied to the analog input, and the level of the signal inputted through the analog input terminal is required to be adjusted before being supplied to an A/D converter. Moreover, it is impossible to record a signal from the apparatus having no analog output terminal but only a digital output terminal.
In addition, the user is required to be informed of whether a signal supplied to the analog input terminal is recorded, whether a signal supplied to the digital input terminal is recorded or whether a signal supplied to the digital terminal is converted into an analog signal, and further converted into a digital signal and then recorded.
Furthermore, upon performing digital recording, precise information on music intervals can be obtained from the user data included in the digital audio interface signal; however, in analog recording, the original music interval information cannot be properly utilized because a music interval is detected by way of the signal level and the elapsed time.